


That Crosses The White Sea

by jerseydevious



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Bad Jokes, College, F/M, Future Fic, I'm just dramatic, Nostalgia, copious references to greek mythology that don't actually work, holy shit, other than that this is very soft, truly i am losing my edge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25852174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/pseuds/jerseydevious
Summary: Maybe the most wondrous of the abilities of man is the ability to move on, if you can.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Blackjack & Things Horses Shouldn't Eat Because They Can't Vomit
Comments: 18
Kudos: 212





	That Crosses The White Sea

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a writing experiment for myself and kind of devolved into me exploring characters I'm not good at writing yet, lol. This is very much me testing out things, trying things on for size.

The shadow of the tree that was once Thalia Grace crossed over Annabeth’s thighs.

Beside her, leaned against the broad base of the tree, settled between massive, snaking roots, Percy flipped through a blue plastic binder. “Do we even have the space for this many new kids?” he said. He flicked to another page, another color-coded print out of an Excel worksheet Chiron had cobbled together on the Big House’s desktop, and his eyebrow raised. “Assuming they’re all, uh, evenly distributed. Assuming that fifty of these kids aren’t, I don’t know, Apollo’s.”

Annabeth pointed her toe. She’d taken her shoes off, and her toes were kind of cold through her socks (which were Percy’s, because in the haste to get to Camp, she’d forgotten to pack her own socks), but it was a relaxing kind of cold. It was only early September. New York had barely frosted over. The deer in the woods were scrambling for the last spoils of summer, the streams and rivers hadn’t plummeted in temperature, the trees were barely starting to turn. She remembered what fall at Camp Half-Blood looked like, remembered it as the season when the luckier kids left and the rest of them were tied together with the knowledge that this was the only home they had in the world, and Thalia’s tree was the only protector they’d ever know. Fall at Camp Half-Blood had looked like cold water and empty shadows and dirt paths that led to nowhere.

“We don’t,” she said. “In our defense, no one expected a demigod baby boom. Didn’t realize one of the effects of war would be the gods rushing to, uh, romance as many mortals as they could before—well. Chiron said some satyrs have reported potential demigods while protecting confirmed demigods, even.”

Percy frowned at the spreadsheet, sheathed neatly in a clear sheet protector. He’d flipped the page again. “This isn’t—oh, this one’s from last year. Tiny Mike’s here.”

“I mean, they’re all there. You’re looking at the only organizational system we have.”

Percy glanced at her. She liked the way the golden fall light made his eyes less of a sea green, more of the green of dark leaves when sunlight shone through them; he looked less ominous. “All?”

“Chiron started keeping track after Thalia,” Annabeth said. It was easier, now, with years of distance, to reference one of the worst nights of her life; easier now to remember being the seven year old girl sobbing in Chiron’s arms because her best friend in the world was gone, settled between his folded, white legs, his broad hands braced against her back. _Zeus has given her a gift,_ he’d said. _She will always be with you, now. She will always protect you._ Easier now to remember Luke’s blood-soaked hand closing around hers and his desperate _, come on, come on, we have to go, we have to go now,_ the sucking noise of the blood filling up his lungs where a cracked rib had popped it like a balloon. But beneath the shadow of the Eastern Pine that had once been Thalia Grace, the last living evidence of her final stand, sitting in the withering fall grass that had once been soaked with Thalia’s blood, it was harder to keep track of her train of thought. Harder to forget that _she will always protect you_ had been a lie.

“Of demigods?” Percy supplied. 

“Yeah,” Annabeth said. Her tongue was dry, cleaved to the roof of her mouth, like she’d gone for a run. “Where’s your water bottle?”

Wordlessly, Percy held it out to her. Annabeth took it, her fingers catching on one of the peeling stickers on the side—a design Rachel had made, that she’d made into a sticker and given to Percy, at his insistence—and took a long, slow drink. She screwed the cap back on and rolled it back to him over the grass. “You’re in there, somewhere, actually.”

Percy flipped the cover of the binder closed, fingering one of the splits in the cover plastic, probably toying with tearing it off. He liked to fidget. Sometimes when she felt poetic, she thought that looking at Percy was like looking at the wind-whipped surface of the ocean, never still, always moving. But mostly it was just Percy being himself. “Huh,” he said. “I never thought about there being a record, I guess, but that makes sense. Why wait so long to make one, anyway?”

Annabeth had asked the same question, because when she’d been new at Camp, she’d shadowed Chiron for the first few days. She was there for the conversation Mr. D and Chiron had about buying a computer for the purpose of making a spreadsheet, folded into a chair at the Big House’s kitchen table, Chiron standing beside her with one back hoof balanced on its toe, digging a spoon around in a jello cup. It had seemed logical, to her, to write everything down. Mr. D had fixed her with a deep, intense, _I have every want and desire to turn you into a porpoise_ kind of stare. Prior to that, apparently, Chiron had remembered campers with last names in the first half of the alphabet, and Mr. D had taken the second half—horrifying, really, but ‘fluent in Microsoft Excel’ wasn’t in either of their job descriptions.

Annabeth shrugged. “Technology isn’t exactly Chiron’s forte, I think. Or change.”

Percy snorted. He pushed the binder off of his lap and to the side, scooting closer to Annabeth. The Golden Fleece ruffled in the breeze, over their heads; years of contact with the Golden Fleece had made Thalia’s tree grow exponentially fast. It used to be a scraggly kind of sapling, the sort of thing that ached to look at, a stark reminder that Thalia had only been a kid herself when Zeus had remade her. But the Golden Fleece turned it into a towering giant, visible from almost anywhere in Camp, with a girth of five feet or more, bolstered by the magic of the Fleece to grow unnaturally proud.

The top of Half-Blood Hill, directly beneath the Golden Fleece, also happened to have the best signal in the entire Camp, short of physically exiting the magical border that protected them. Which was why they were there in the first place. 

Percy dug his phone out of his pocket. “They’ll call soon,” he said. “Or do you want to just call them first, so we’re not waiting.”

“I don’t mind waiting,” Annabeth said, which was true, she didn’t mind waiting. There were other things to look at, than Thalia’s tree, than the grass which she’d bled on; Percy’s eyes, for one, the way his long fingers fumbled with his phone and a tear in his jeans and a stray thread dangling from the sleeve of his hoodie. He was never still. The wind never stopped lashing the surface of the sea. It made him distracting, and sometimes he was a distraction Annabeth was grateful for—most of the time, maybe, but sometimes the way Annabeth loved Percy’s presence scared her.

Percy shrugged. “I’ll just call,” he said, and shifted so he was closer to her, their shoulders pressed flush together. He tapped the cracked screen of his phone, finding the contact labeled _moooooooooom,_ with the letter ‘o’s replaced by heart emotes. Easier to recognize, that way. Sally picked up the video call on the third ring. 

“I love you,” she said, by way of greeting, the phone positioned below her face, “have I told you that?”

Percy snickered. “Hi, Mom. I love you too,” he said, and then turned the phone to Annabeth. Annabeth offered Sally a wave.

“Hi, dear, you’re just in time,” Sally said, and then the camera flipped, showing the bouncing hallway as Sally walked down it. “Estelle!” she shouted. 

The camera froze, and then focused again as Sally was turning into Estelle’s room; a wash of purple walls and stacked stuff animals, Paul on his hands and knees in the middle of the room, Estelle sat on his back, holding an empty paper towel roll. She shrieked out a giggle when she saw Sally, and dove behind Paul, scrambling away. There was a _thud_ as she hit the carpet, but Estelle gave no indication she was hurt.

“She’s supposed to be getting ready for bed,” Sally said. 

Paul had the grace to look mildly guilty. “She wanted to play horse and rider. I tried to lull her to sleep by, uh, galloping, er. Gently. Gently galloping. Very gently. Are you filming this? You can’t send another video to Danielle, she’ll—”

“No, you just have no spine,” Sally said. “And yes, I’m filming it. It’s not just Danielle. Live broadcast, the entire world is seeing that Paul Jackson has absolutely no spine.”

Percy pressed his mouth into Annabeth’s shoulder to muffle his laugh. 

Estelle crawled beneath Paul, towel paper rod, and its mysterious purpose, abandoned. “Hide and seek now!” she said. Her dark, curly hair was in a flurry around her head, despite the attempt to tame it with various bright orange, glittery hair clips, and her eyes—deep brown, like Paul’s—were wild. It reminded Annabeth a bit of Blackjack, when Percy snuck out to get him churros from the 7-Eleven a few miles away from Camp—he’d raise his head so his neck was curved over his withers, whites of his eyes showing, making needy, nasally, desperate horse-ish growls. It always made Percy laugh.

“Stelle, sweetie, come say ‘hi’ to Percy before you have to go to sleep,” Sally said, and the camera lowered. Estelle grabbed the phone, leaning into the front camera until the only thing taking up the screen was one of her eyes, and then the camera started fluttering wildly, the only discernible voice being Estelle’s raucous laughter, the only discernible sound the pounding of her feet on the carpet.

“I think she’s playing hide and seek anyway,” Annabeth said, and Percy muffled another laugh in her shoulder. Annabeth pulled the phone out of his hands because it was starting to shake, with how much he was laughing. It was in his left hand, too, which didn’t exactly have the strongest grip, not since the fires of Mount Saint Helens had burned the nerve endings on the last two of his fingers.

“Estelle!” Sally shouted, from somewhere in the background. The phone dropped to the floor. It was picked up, and the camera looked down an abashed-looking Estelle, the sequin giraffe on her shirt looking distinctly rumpled, the one sock she was wearing rolled halfway down on the arch of her foot. There was a lurid bruise over her left shin, but otherwise, she was the same tiny gremlin Estelle always was—she seemed to have some sort of internal mechanism she could turn on and off at will, a _I think I’ll turn into a mostly-feral squirrel on caffeine pills right now_ switch. The way you couldn’t feed a gremlin after midnight, or they’d grow mohawks and bat-ears and take over the town.

“We don’t take things and run away,” Sally said, sternly. “Can you go to your room?”

Estelle started to make a noise of dissent, but was silenced, most likely by one of Sally’s _I dare you to say something_ looks, and she trotted off down the hall, calling out for Paul. 

“Where’d she get that bruise from,” Percy said. His voice was uncommonly flat. He had any number of strange, intensely protective moods regarding Estelle—one time they’d taken her to paint some pottery at a local gallery, in an outreach program they’d been hosting. The host had complimented Estelle’s horse, which was one, solid lavender, broken only by red eyes, like a demon. It had reminded Annabeth of the Mares of Diomedes, in a way. Percy had bristled like the host had pointed a dagger to Estelle’s neck and sworn to damn her soul to the Fields of Punishment, and Annabeth had never been able to figure out why.

“Oh, it was awful,” Sally said. The camera didn’t turn around, instead showing Sally compulsively straightening the throw pillows and blankets and popcorn bowls (empty of all but the last kernels) strewn over the couch. Saturday was usually movie night, at the Jackson household. “We were at the park, with Linda and her boys, and I left for half a minute to fill up a water bottle and I come back, and she’s halfway up a tree. Could not talk her into getting down for anything, and I mean anything, for the longest time. But when she finally gave in—I had to bait her with ice cream—she stumbled on the way down. I love her to death, but she’s a nightmare.”

“Was Percy better or worse?” Annabeth said, grinning.

“You’re not allowed to say anything about the war cannon thing,” Percy said, immediately. “I know that was bad, I get it, I know. You have to stop holding it over my head someday.”

“Please ignore him. I absolutely have to know about the war cannon thing,” Annabeth said.

“Aside from the war cannon,” Sally said, and the camera flipped back around to show her face, heart-shaped and set with blue eyes, dark like the polar sea. “He wouldn’t have done that. Not because he didn’t have the instincts of a little monster, really, but because he went with me everywhere. He was attached to me at the hip.”

Annabeth cooed. Percy shoved her shoulder, and the coo turned into an aborted, huffing laugh.

“I think baby stories shouldn't be allowed to be told after someone turns twenty-one,” Percy said. “New law. You get to drink, legally, and your mom can’t say embarrassing things about you, legally.”

“Like that would stop me,” Sally said. “I like bragging on you, you were _so_ cute, and, you know, I made you. So it’s technically bragging on me, therefore you can’t make it illegal.”

“Watch me, this is a threat,” Percy said, smiling. “I can make bragging illegal.”

“Your threats are weak. Is that what you tell the dracanae, that you’re going to run for political office and make it illegal to eat demigods?” 

Percy huffed. “Yeah, actually. I say that every time, don’t I, Annabeth.”

“It’s really cute that you think I’m going to help you stick it to your mom,” Annabeth said. She flicked his arm, lightly, mindful of the Curse of Achilles, which tended to break things that met Percy’s skin too harshly. “If you help me steal the van to go get Fun Dip, I’ll say yes. And, uh, I don’t know, tell me about the war cannon thing.”

“I hate you sometimes,” Percy muttered.

Sally laughed, a sound clear and high like bells. “If I hear you didn’t get Annabeth Fun Dip, I’ll ground you.”

Percy made a startled noise in the back of his throat. “Can we revisit the part where I’m twenty-one,” he said, indignantly. “And Annabeth’s older than me, if she wants to steal the van to get Fun Dip, she can steal the van herself.”

Annabeth remembered being thirteen and ribbing Percy for being younger, his sullen, annoyed, _barely older than me, barely, barely! We’re basically the same age, Annabeth, stop._ The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. “I would not bring back sour gummy worms for you, if you did that to me,” Annabeth said.

“Mom, you’re supposed to tell me not to break the rules.”

Sally’s eyebrows crawled to her hairline. “I tried. And then the war cannon incident happened, and I gave up.”

The conversation petered out into the usual long-strung goodbyes, the declarations of love, and sometimes Annabeth thought the process of ending a call with Sally took longer than the process of the call itself. Sally was one of those people who could turn a three second goodbye into a thirty-minute discussion about the appropriate seasoning for carne asada. But finally Percy ended the call, pocketed his phone, and stood, offering Annabeth his hand. The light caught a silvery scar over the meat of his thumb. She didn’t remember how he’d gotten it.

“Do you want to steal the van,” he said, “or do you just want to take Blackjack, so he can eat his churros while they’re still hot.”

Annabeth wrapped her hand around his and pulled herself up. She toed on her shoes, lifting one leg and pulling the sneaker on all the way by hooking her finger under the heel. “Flying off on Blackjack is less likely to be noticed than stealing the van.”

Percy snorted. “I like that our lives are the kind where the giant flying horse is less noticeable than the normal car.”

“Bold assumption. It’s a half-rust half-pastel orange Volkswagen van, it’s not a normal car.”

The pegasi stables were on the other side of Camp, but they weren’t interrupted, really; most of the campers were busy at their evening activities, or, if they’d finished, were waiting in shower lines and trading gossip with their cabinmates. The line for the shower was a sacred time, in the day of a demigod, because there was never a better time to talk trash about someone than when they were sucking up every ounce of available hot water. Annabeth had only been called back to help Chiron plan out space for the next, and significantly larger, generation of demigods, and Percy had come back to be with her. And teach a few swordfighting lessons, maybe—he sometimes came back on weekends during the summer to hold larger swordfighting workshops, but for the most part, his job back in Ithaca and her studies at Cornell kept them both fairly busy. It hurt, like prodding a fresh bruise, to walk through Camp Half-Blood and know she’d never live here again, to turn her head and see the tree on Half-Blood Hill that wasn’t the one she’d grown up with. It hurt to know that she’d never wait in line in front of the Big House while Chiron called out names to pass out weekly schedules, that she couldn’t turn the corner and see Clarisse with a bandanna pinning her hair back, sharpening her spear diligently—Clarisse was across the country, a fresh University of Arizona graduate with a sports medicine degree. Everyone Annabeth had grown up with was either dead, far away and never coming back, or someone she rarely saw, someone she rarely spoke to. Everything Annabeth had grown up with belonged to a new generation of half-bloods.

Percy kissed her cheek. “Stop scowling,” he said. “If anyone sees you, they’re gonna think I’m a hostage victim.”

“You _are_ a hostage victim,” Annabeth mumbled, but she squeezed his hand, laced with hers, anyway.

“In that case, what’s it called? Stockholm Syndrome? In that case, Stockholm Syndrome rocks,” he said. He let go of her hand and trotted up the stairs that led to the backside of the pegasi stable, taking the wooden steps two at a time. Annabeth almost told him not to trip, but as she opened her mouth, Percy’s sneaker caught a little on the top step, but he recovered and flashed a grin down at her like he’d done it intentionally. Everyone knew to watch the top step on this path, because the top step was just a little taller than all the rest, and Annabeth almost raked him over the coals for it—but he was still smiling, and it was the kind of smile that cleared her brain of every thought she’d ever had.

Annabeth followed, up the stairs, mindful of the top step, and around the edge of the barn. Percy hauled the red sliding door open—the barn was always closed, after the last of the pegasi riding lessons had ended—and Annabeth was hit with the smell of sweet hay and dust. It was what Percy came home smelling like every day, because in Ithaca, he worked for a stable, a job he’d gotten entirely on accident. But it was better than the other jobs available to him. Annabeth sometimes tried to imagine Percy as a waiter, and that train of thought usually ended with Percy stabbing someone in the eye with a fork.

A few of the pegasi whinnied, but over their voices came Blackjack’s roar of a neigh, something more of a bellow. He pawed at the door of his stall angrily, and she could see his great, black wings shuffling in anticipation, even through the din of the unlit stable.

Percy jogged to Blackjack’s stall, murmuring something Annabeth couldn’t catch. He fumbled for the light switch on the wall and pulled back the barred sliding door and unlatched the yellow-painted metal chain behind it, and Blackjack burst out of the stall in a flurry of feathers and swishing tail. He forced his nose into Percy’s palm, bumping it again and again, blowing out hot air. His hooves danced on the sawdust floor, kicking up shavings.

Percy laughed. “I’m sorry! I know, Chiron wasn’t the one who sent the pegasi to pick me and Annabeth up, it was Claire. Yes, that Claire. She just doesn’t know we’re bros, man. Yes, I’ll tell her. Okay, now you’re breathing in my—”

Blackjack stuck his muzzle directly into Percy’s face, delivering a slimy horse lick to Percy’s forehead, tousling his hair a bit. He whinnied, loud and sharp, and several of the other horses in the barn responded. There was a crash as one horse kicked the back of their stall, but there were so many new pegasi these days, Annabeth couldn’t have named which one it was.

“We’re going to 7-Eleven,” Percy said. “It’s—it’s like—they sell churros, is the thing. I know it’s not exactly riding into battle against the Titan army, but—”

Blackjack half-reared, an incomprehensible noise bubbling out of his throat, and cantered down the breezeway and out of the stable. Annabeth ducked the edge of one of his wings narrowly. Blackjack preened once in the late evening light, stretching his wings and beating the ground with his hooves, lashing his tail.

“I think he seems impatient,” Annabeth said, mildly.

“You should listen to him,” Percy said. But he was grinning.

Two riders on a pegasus was a difficult business, because the muscles powering their wings were anchored just behind the front legs. One rider was optimal, because the first rider sat on the part of the back that was easiest for the horse to bear weight, and easiest not to fall off of during takeoff, and was effectively pinned into place by the wings themselves. But two riders meant someone was sitting closer to the hindquarters, closer to the engine that powered takeoff. It was a bumpy ride. So Annabeth sat in front, fingers looped in Blackjack’s coarse mane, and Percy sat behind her, arms wrapped around her torso. His cheek was pressed against her ear. When she was fourteen, this had felt like having butterflies in her blood, their wings tickling the thin walls of her veins and arteries in a way that had almost hurt. Love, but for the thrill of it.

Blackjack kicked off at a gallop, lurching forward, digging his hooves into the dirt and pummeling the earth, beating his wings as he gained speed. He kicked off the ground, pitching Percy into her back, and at the highest arc of his jump his wings swept downwards and pushed them into the air. Behind her, Percy whooped—he’d always liked flying with Blackjack. But mostly the world was a roar of wind and the blur of roads and trees and cars beneath them.

“You know where it’s at, right,” Percy called. “I’ve taken you before, you know, do you—”

Blackjack snorted.

“That was a very convincing yes!”

The pegasus touched down a few minutes later, back hooves first, on the grassy strip between the road and the convenience store, cycling through his gaits as he slowed down. Grass and dirt was always more forgiving to land on than asphalt, but Annabeth wished she’d urged Blackjack to land behind the store, or maybe Percy could have told him. Clear-sighted mortals were few and far between, but a pegasus in plain sight seemed just a bit risky.

Percy slid off and offered his hand to Annabeth. Annabeth took it and hopped down, ankles absorbing the hit—even among pegasi, Blackjack was far from small. She hated dismounting from his back, and it was especially difficult because if Percy wasn’t around, Blackjack tended to start walking forward when someone was trying to get off of him. There was a reason Blackjack wasn’t used in riding lessons.

Blackjack dropped his head to the ground, ripping up the grass, chewing on it. He grunted, ears swiveling backwards.

“It’s 7-Eleven grass, why did you expect it to taste good,” Percy said, patting Blackjack’s withers. “I’ll be back. Maybe move away from the road. If a car comes around that corner, you’ll bolt from here clear to Jersey City.”

Blackjack lifted his head and made a noise like blowing raspberries, and then stretched to nibble on the loose material of Percy’s hoodie, folded around his arm. After Percy didn’t bat him off, he bit down and jerked, hard, pulling Percy with him, offering a high, piercing neigh.

Percy shoved his nose away. “I hate you, sometimes,” he said, and followed Annabeth into the store. Annabeth could see Blackjack tossing his head in the reflection of the grimy storefront window, between the Marlboro and Monster Energy posters.

“Did you bring your wallet,” Percy said. “I think I left mine in the Big House. Mr. D stole it, so he could swing around my driver’s license and beg me to go buy him wine.”

“Is that what happened when I was talking to Chiron about reservations,” Annabeth hummed, swinging open the 7-Eleven door. A bell rattled, and the clerk waved at them, but he looked shell-shocked. Annabeth wondered what he saw instead of Blackjack, or if he just saw a massive, jet-black stallion, like something from a children’s novel.

“Oh, definitely,” Percy said, spinning the sunglasses stand. “Why do 7-Elevens only sell wraparound sunglasses. I feel like we’re in cheap Oakley, or something.”

“Oakley doesn’t sell White Claw,” Annabeth said, darting down the candy aisle. She snatched up a few packs of fun dip, and one bag of gummy worms.

When she looked up, Percy was looking at her, his nose wrinkled in disgust. “White Claw?” he said.

“I mean, maybe,” she said. “They might have, like, boxed wine, but I think if I brought wine across the border and didn’t let him at least smell it, Mr. D might actually skin me alive. And I don’t feel like explaining to my old camp director who’s known me since I was seven that I am legally able to drink.”

Percy rolled his eyes. One hand came up to toy with a hoodie string, blocking half of the bold, blue _Sharks Are Friends, NOT FOOD_ text. “Or you could just get apple juice.”

Annabeth cocked a brow. “Apple juice?”

“Apple juice is fun, and wholesome, and entirely appropriate for a summer camp of teenagers,” Percy said, eyes back on the sunglasses. He plucked out a particularly offensive American flag-themed pair and perched them on his face. “What do you think? Patriotism.”

“They’re disgusting.”

“This is just Gucci’s new high fashion direction,” Percy said. “I can’t hear you insulting me. All I can hear is bald eagles crying and, I don’t know, Tim McGraw.”

Annabeth crossed over to the fridges lining the walls, scanning for the alcoholic section. “If you ever say the words ‘Tim’ and ‘McGraw’ in that order to me ever again, I’ll kill you, and that’s a threat, because I know how.”

Percy came to her side, still wearing the glasses, and bumped her shoulder. “But I like that Taylor Swift song,” he said. “It’s her best song. Every lyric is just Tim McGraw’s name in different tones, I think it qualifies as modern art.”

Annabeth huffed. She pulled open one of the doors and pulled out a six pack of hard seltzers wrapped in a pink-and-white packaging, the embarrassing fruity-flavored ones that she liked to drink while reviewing her notes during the school year. Percy, again, pulled a face, which was kind of annoying of him, considering he was wearing wraparound sunglasses printed with the stars and stripes and the tag was sticking out sideways. Annabeth would’ve liked to pull them off of his face, but her hands were full. He looked like an unfortunate cross of a Huntington Beach reject and the average middle-aged father from Bumfuck, Arkansas.

“Oh, wallet,” she said. “It’s in my shorts, can you grab it.”

“Jeeze, Annabeth, you don’t have to make up such lies to get me to grab your butt,” Percy said, grinning.

“I hate you sometimes,” she said, and maneuvered to elbow him in the stomach. “Wallet, back pocket.”

Percy slipped her wallet out of her back pocket, and Annabeth started down the aisle, jerking her head to the sunglasses stand at the end of it. “Put those back,” she said.

“Fly Over States is playing,” Percy said. “I can’t hear you.”

“How are you able to name a single Tim McGraw song?” Annabeth asked.

Percy shrugged, pulling the damned sunglasses off and replacing them on the rack. “Grover likes country music. I’m friends with him on Spotify. He’s been listening to Lady Antebellum and Lady Antebellum only for the last week, I’m kind of worried about him.”

Annabeth snickered. She dropped the six pack and the candy on the counter, and the clerk, a kid with curly ginger hair and eyes wide as saucers, said, “Did you really ride a horse here?”

“Yes,” Percy answered, immediately. “All the way from South Carolina, actually.”

“No way,” the clerk—Daniel, judging by his nametag—said. “No way. That’s not possible.”

“I mean, we stopped and made camp. Haven’t you ever heard of the Pony Express? It’s totally possible,” Percy said, seriously.

“We rode a horse because the roads are so bad in South Carolina,” Annabeth said.

Daniel flipped the six pack over and used the barcode scanner to ring it up. “I’ve never been,” he said, hesitantly.

“There’s no gas tax, and that’s how states usually care for the roads. So South Carolina has some gravel, and maybe half a road,” Annabeth said. “Bag, please, actually.”

Daniel finished ringing up the candy, and peered outside, looking again at the ominous, massive form of Blackjack. “You really rode a horse all the way from South Carolina?”

“It was better than the roads,” Percy said. He shoved Annabeth’s card into the chip reader and punched in her pin, all with that dangerous, wild look on his face that meant he was about to laugh. He always looked like he’d done something dangerous, when he had a laugh in the back his throat, hiding behind his teeth.

Daniel looked curiously at the bag. “Oh, shit,” he said. “Uh. You’re twenty-one, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Annabeth said. “And I’m excited to get my first DUI. On horseback. It would be irresponsible, to drink and drive. But it’s fine if it’s a horse.”

Percy smothered his mouth with the palm of his hand. Daniel squinted at her, unsure, but he tore off their receipt and tucked it in their bag anyway.

“Wait, hold on a second,” Percy said. “Can we get some churros?”

Daniel bagged the churros and rung them up, with a concerned, confused look on his face—wisely he didn’t comment, though, and tucked the second receipt in the bag and pushed it across the counter to Percy.

“They’re for the horse, we couldn’t forget the churros,” Percy said.

Daniel squeaked. “The _horse?_ You mean—”

“Churros are actually very good for horses. It’s the horse version of, uh, activated charcoal,” Percy said, solemnly, snagging the bag with the churros with an index finger.

He started laughing the second the door closed behind them. Annabeth shoved his shoulder, and Percy tumbled backwards, still choking on a laugh. “South Carolina? You’re a fucking dolt!”

“We were talking about country music! It was on the brain!” he said, wiping at his eyes. “Holy fuck. And the fact that you bought, what—you bought _hard seltzer?_ Getting a DUI with _hard seltzer?”_

“South fucking Carolina,” she said.

They fed Blackjack the churros in the parking lot, because Blackjack could mow through a churro in half a second, but according to Percy, he liked them hot best. Daniel the 7-Eleven clerk watched them intently through the window, so when Percy and Annabeth mounted, Percy told Blackjack to move out of the clerk’s line of sight before taking off, so there was a bit of a tumultuous twist to the side to avoid the tree line, but outside of that the flight back was smooth.

It was a blue, cold kind of twilight by the time they touched back down in front of the barn. The fading sun had sucked the color out of the world as it passed, turning everything to shades of blues and washed out grays. They dismounted in the barn, rather than be out in the quickly cooling night, and Percy tucked Blackjack into his stall. He pressed a quick kiss to the horse’s cheek, probably where he thought Annabeth couldn’t see, so Annabeth pretended she hadn’t noticed it at all.

“The harpies are probably out by now,” Annabeth said.

“They won’t come after us. We’re not campers.”

“I did make the mistake of buying hard seltzer,” she said, “in pursuit of a horseback DUI.”

Percy latched Blackjack’s stall. “What’s your plan,” he said, turning to her.

“I don’t have one,” she said.

Percy snorted. “Liar, you always have a plan.”

“Okay, but saying the plan out loud seems kind of dumb,” she said.

Percy crossed his arms. He always looked more imposing when he did that, but Annabeth doubted he realized it. Part of Annabeth loved that Percy was taller than her, now, because it meant his hugs enveloped her; but the other part of her hated it, because she missed being able to mock him for being shorter. It was always a good conversation starter, and a great way to wipe a stupidly smug looks off of his face. “I’m listening,” he said, “but remember that if it is actually dumb, I will hold it against you for the rest of time.”

“I’ll take you up on that,” she said. She gestured to the hay loft. “The stable has heating. And a hay loft, and no one ever looks in the hay loft at night.”

“Oh, that’s not dumb,” Percy said, sounding genuinely disappointed. “I do that all the time.”

Annabeth tilted her head. “Really?”

“I don’t go out for lunch break. I just take a nap in the hay loft while everyone else is at lunch,” Percy said.

Annabeth laughed hard enough that she inhaled her own spit and spent full minute and a half coughing. “That’s—very you,” she managed, after.

“They’re good naps, Annabeth,” he said, with a petulant edge to his voice.

“I would hope so,” she said, unable to force her smile down.

Percy’s answering smile was soft at the edges; when he smiled wide, laugh lines, just like Sally’s, dug into the corners of his eyes, but this particular smile brought forward only the ghost of them. He set off to the tack room, where they kept the hulking aluminum ladder to get into the hay loft and returned carrying both the ladder and some well-worn, half-shredded quilts thrown over his shoulder.

“You know where those quilts are from, right,” she called.

“Not a singular fucking clue,” he said. “But they are ugly as anything.”

“Mr. D used to sew quilts when I first got to Camp. It was a stress relief thing. He sucked at it. I’m not sure if he still does,” she said.

“Hold on a second,” Percy said. He perched the ladder with a clang beneath one of the open gaps in the hay loft, and then turned to her. He pointed at the quilts thrown over his shoulder. “These? Mr. D sewed _these?”_

“Mmhmm,” Annabeth said.

“Mr. D,” Percy said, helplessly. “He—our Mr. D?”

“The very same.”

Percy shook his head and turned to the ladder. “He got bodysnatched, I think.”

“Olympians can’t get bodysnatched. Probably.”

Percy clambered up the ladder. A few horses startled at the noise, shrieking out whinnies that could’ve busted Annabeth’s ear drums had they been just a bit louder. Annabeth followed him up the ladder, sidling up it almost sideways because of the plastic bag digging deep, raw, red lines into her fingers. Percy leaned over and took it from her hand so she could pull herself all the way up.

“It’s warmer up here than I thought it’d be,” she said.

Percy shrugged. “It’s always pretty warm, in these.”

“Which stall are we above?”  
  


“Sophocles’s,” Percy said. Percy crossed over a few torn apart bales of hay and called down to Jasper through the square hole where Sophocles’s bright green hay net was bolted. “Hey, buddy.”

There was no audible response.

“He’s out like a light,” Percy said. He pulled the quilts off of his shoulder and dumped them on a bale of hay, and then untangled one from the pile, shook it out like a towel at the beach; it hit the ground a bit awkwardly, and Annabeth dropped the plastic bag by her feet, and bent to smooth out the corners.

Percy snickered. “It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

“It’ll annoy me otherwise,” she said. “You know how we’re always missing date night?”

Percy took the second quilt, one of alternating pineapple and dog paw print squares—or they could’ve been bears, or cow prints, the lighting in the loft wasn’t exactly the brightest—and shook it out over the first, like a blanket. “I missed date night last time for the miracle of birth, okay.”

“You’re a proud mother, I know,” Annabeth said. She squeezed behind Percy and smoothed out the last corner. “But don’t you think this is a _kind_ of date night? And you didn’t even have to miss it to go talk a nervous horse through labor.”

“Sure, if date night entails only kind of being able to see the other person.”

“There are lanterns in the tack room,” she said.

Percy raised an eyebrow. He definitely did, because Percy’s eyebrows were thick enough that she could see the distinctive shapes of them in the dark. “I didn’t see any.”

“We keep lanterns everywhere, dorkus. It’s a camp of half-bloods used to almost dying on the daily. We keep prepared.”

Percy rolled one of his shoulders, made a bitchy face at her. It was his bitchiest face, too, because he didn’t have the grace to look properly annoyed; he just mimed her speaking, and it got on Annabeth’s nerves every single time. He fiddled with his pockets, eventually finding the one he’d tucked his phone into. He flicked on the flashlight. “There. Romantic lighting.”

Annabeth gave the harsh blue-white light a scant gaze. “Put on the hay bale over there. The top one. No, the—what does top mean, Percy? There you go. Now it’s romantic lighting.”

Percy settled cross-legged, back pressed against one stack of hay bales. Annabeth settled beside him, stretching her legs out so Percy’s bony knee wasn’t knocking into her bony knee every three seconds, and fished everything out of the bag.

“I didn’t check what kinds of Fun Dip I got,” she said.

Percy plucked up a bag and held it closer to the light. “Blue raspberry. You got lucky. There would’ve been hell to pay.”

Annabeth cut her eyes at him. “I don’t remember buying any Fun Dip for you. The gummy worms are for you, not the Fun Dip. I’m the one who argued the case in favor of the Fun Dip.”

“I’m invoking my right to a boyfriend tax,” Percy said.

Annabeth shoved his knee. “Like hell you are!”

“You’re wearing my socks,” he said. “My socks! If you get to wear all of my clothes, I get a right to a cut of your Fun Dip. This is a racket, babe.”

“You’re cruel,” she said. “I was excited for the blue raspberry.”

Percy stuck his tongue out at her. “Cry about it into your shirt. Which is mine. This isn’t even a racket, I guess. I think this is just what we in the business call _fair.”_

Annabeth pulled the collar of her shirt up and licked it. “Claimed. Mine now.”

“Spit cannot be exchanged for goods and services,” Percy said.

“Unless,” Annabeth said, “it’s _your_ goods and services.”

Annabeth was certain he was blushing, even if she couldn’t see it—she was half-tempted to reach out and feel his cheeks, see if they were hot to the touch, looking to see if she’d flustered him. “Fine, yeah,” he mumbled, a minute later. “Yeah. Fine. I guess. When Chris says I’m whipped, is this what he means?”  
  


“I have no idea. I think everything Chris Rodriguez says is basically impenetrable, like the walls of Troy,” she lied. She thought of the false history of Achilles, killed by Paris’s arrow as he scaled the walls of Troy, tried not to think about an arrow lodged at the small of Percy’s back. How fast had Achilles died? Had it been instant, the second the arrow pierced his heel, or did Achilles lay in the blood-soaked earth and feel death creep upon him? She tore open the box of seltzers and pulled out a peach flavored one. “Do you want one?”

“It’s cute that you still ask. I feel included.”

Annabeth elbowed him. He elbowed her back, and she yanked on a lock of his hair. “Don’t mock me for being a charitable girlfriend and offering,” she said.

“Since you’re so charitable,” Percy said, and he reached across her, pulled a can out of the box, popped the tab, and tipped it into his mouth. Annabeth didn’t hide the way her eyes followed the line of his throat, the half-exposed hollows of his collarbone where he wasn’t wearing a shirt beneath his hoodie. A scar slithered along the side of his neck. She thought, again, of Achilles, if Achilles had known what it was like to die, or if Achilles had died his only death for himself when Patroclus had been killed. Her own hazy memories burst to the surface of the blazing heat of the knife sinking into her hilt-deep, and then the pounding of blood in her skull as her heart pushed out the blood she needed to survive, and then the sound of Percy shouting, like the shadow of ship through the fog hanging low to the sea—Percy wasn’t Achilles, but he had inherited his rage. It was an awful trade, to never get scarred again, but Annabeth was selfish about him and thought that it was worth it, to reduce the risk of seeing Percy’s face when he could hear the beating of the Keres’ leather wings.

Annabeth preoccupied herself with popping the tab on her own drink. She’d never actually seen Percy drink before—which didn’t mean that he’d never had alcohol before, but if he had, she’d never heard of it. She’d never seen it. And though he’d never said anything, he never seemed all that fond of Annabeth’s occasional stress relief drink, either. It was expressed solely in side glances, tight expressions, but he’d never seemed all that fond.

“How is it, before I go in, I’ve never bought these before,” she said.

“This one’s like strawberries, if strawberries were made of hate,” he said.

Annabeth took a sip of hers. “Peach juice,” she said. “I don’t know, but more intense.”

Percy’s grin was lopsided. “Like peach juice with alcohol. The thing that you’re drinking. That you paid for. Like what’s on the label.”

Annabeth shook her head. “No. This might sound gross, but you know how fruits are kind of like human ovaries?”

Percy choked on his drink; he’d had the misfortune of being mid-sip, when she’d said that. “I didn’t know that, I didn’t _ever_ need to know that, what the fuck—”

“—but it’s like this peach was menstruating,” Annabeth said. “But spiritually, because peaches can’t actually menstruate.”

Percy spluttered. “I hate you,” he said, wiping his mouth, “I hate you more than words can express. You haven’t even had one drink and I’m cutting you off.”

Annabeth raised a brow. “Oh, are you willing to fight me now? Only now, after all these years?”

“I’m gonna dump this drink on your head,” he said.

“I’ll retaliate with a vengeance.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Percy said, but his voice had shifted into something fond, and sweet, like the taste of peaches in the back of her throat. Their senior year of high school, they’d spent a week of their summer on a roadtrip down US-17, the coastal highway; it was half relief that they’d survived long enough to graduate, half the last exaltation of a childhood they’d only tasted in bits and pieces. They’d meandered around, on the way to Daytona, but Annabeth’s favorite pit stop had been a farmer’s market they’d stopped at for directions, in somewhere, anywhere, nowhere Georgia.

_I’ve never actually had a peach,_ Annabeth had said, to one of the women in overalls and messily braided hair working the stall. The woman had plucked a peach out of a wooden box and handed it to her. She’d bitten into it and it had been sweet and soft and the juice had dribbled down her chin. With sticky fingers, she’d forked over cash for a bag of a dozen, and when Percy had seen her balancing the bag on her hip he’d said _, you’re on your own, you bought them, you eat them._ But of course, Percy had a sweet tooth, too, and apparently nothing in the world was sweeter than a Georgia peach on the hottest week of June, and every time she’d kissed him on that trip after that she could taste peaches. Even when that dozen was relegated to hard pits rotting in a garbage can at a rest stop just across the Florida border, relegated to the rearview mirror, she thought she could taste them still. But maybe it was just that Percy was the sweetest thing she’d ever had.

He leaned his head back against the hay, eyes closed. Annabeth took the opportunity to lay against him, and his arm wrapped around her shoulders. In return she hooked an arm around his waist. Achilles and his blood and Paris’s arrow lived in the past, with the peach pits on the Florida border and the dirty sand of Daytona, with the scraggly, willowy Eastern Pine that Thalia Grace had been once upon a time, with the blood that’d watered Half-Blood Hill, fed its grass, made it lush. _She will always protect you_ was a lie but an old one _,_ buried with Chiron, the child Achilles had been, and the lyre Chiron had taught him to play. It ached, but there were worse aches, like the leather wingbeats of the Keres.

She knew Percy had been drifting off, because when she poked him between the ribs a while later, he jerked beneath her with a disgruntled, annoyed noise, one that caught between his throat and his teeth.

“I don’t mean to ruin kind of date night,” she said, tentatively.

“There is literally nothing requiring you to ruin kind of date night,” Percy grumbled. He reached up with his free hand, folded it to scrub at his eyes. The last two fingers on that hand only folded halfway. The shiny-gnarled surface of the burn scars that crawled up that side of his hand caught the light, the only existing evidence that Percy had been in Mount Saint Helens when it had erupted. If he had been anyone else, there would be no evidence; his bones would’ve been unfindable, blown clear across the blast radius.

Annabeth reached for the hand that was cupping her shoulder, playing with his fingers. “I’ve just started senior year, Percy,” she said.

“Oh, right,” he said. “My least favorite conversation in the world. You could rip out my teeth and pound rusty nails into the holes, and I’d enjoy that more than this conversation, actually.”

“We can’t keep _not_ having the conversation because you don’t want to,” she said. She hadn’t intended to snap, but she’d snapped anyway.

Percy pulled away. “Can we at least do this away from Sophocles the horse, I’m sure he’s dreaming up brilliant plays, right now, and I’d hate to interrupt.”

“Miranda said they named him Sophocles because he does nothing but sleep, and the plays of Sophocles put everyone to sleep,” Annabeth said. She waved her hand. “I disagree, but—but the point isn’t the horse’s ability as a playwright, dammit, the point is that every time I bring this up, you find a way to get weasel out of it.”

“Weasel, hm,” he said. His voice was flat, hard, the way obsidian was, the way it always got when he was starting to get angry but didn’t want to show it.

Annabeth smoothed her baby curls back to her head, tugged down her ponytail, hoping maybe the pounding at her temples was just the weight of her hair. “You said it was a gap _year._ It turned into a gap… almost four years.”

“Excuse me if the prospect of college doesn’t actually sound all that fun,” Percy snapped. “Can we stop, now? Save this for when we get home.”

_Home,_ and the way he said it, almost sliced her hamstrings and left her tumbling to the ground; effective word, _almost,_ the word that was so close to but never would be _enough._ Percy tended to think of their apartment as some sort of consecrated ground, a place you had to leave, if you wanted to fight. He stopped fights, brought them back up in the car, on a hike, anywhere but there. The hypocrisy of his _save_ _this for when we get home_ burned, and she almost called him on it, but calling Percy a hypocrite when he was already angry was like tossing a pack of firecrackers into a campfire.

“You have to _want_ to do something,” she said. The words were sharp in her throat, because that was the crux, wasn’t it—Percy hadn’t so much as phrased a vague desire to do anything with his life since before the Second Titan War had ended, if he ever had. She’d articulated this frustration so badly, for so long, and now the words had found her; _you have to want to do something._

“Oh, fuck that,” Percy said, blowing out a harsh breath. “Fuck that. I’m not you, Annabeth, I don’t have—I don’t want anything, okay? I like this. I like being with you, I like what we have. Why does it have to change?”

“Because everything changes!” she said. “It’s all—it’s all changing! Camp is different, the world is different. Time fucking goes _on,_ Percy.”

“Stop projecting the fact that Camp’s different and that makes you nervous on me,” he said, sharply.

Annabeth groaned. “I’m not, though. I don’t know. Maybe a little bit. Fuck, Percy, it’s just—don’t you think it’s time for something else?”

“Like what?” he asked.

Annabeth worked her jaw. She pushed away, re-settled herself with her legs crossed beneath her, because she had a feeling this would be the kind of conversation where looking each other in the eyes would be more important than being close. “Like—dreams, Percy, dreams. What did you want to do, when you were a kid?”

Percy stared at her for a second. “You don’t get it, do you. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Nothing, Annabeth. I’m _okay_ with what I have. I don’t want more.”

Annabeth looked down at her lap, her folded hands, but she didn’t see them—she saw the architecture firm that lived in her head, a portfolio boasting classical extravagance and incorporating eco-friendly practices, the hybrid of the architecture that was her godly heritage and the bold visions of the future. She looked down and saw structures that would stand the test of time, she looked down and saw a new kind of Parthenon, she saw her name in lights. Something more permanent than herself.

“When I was a kid,” she said, “you—you know what I wanted. The thing that I wanted. You saw it. And I got that, even if it wasn’t exactly what I had imagined, but I don’t want to stop. There are—there’s other things I want to do.”

Percy ducked his head. One of his hands was drumming on his thigh, rapidly. “You’ll do them,” he said, thickly.

Annabeth squinted. She wished he would look up; his eyes were the most expressive part of him, almost always the key to the puzzle. “Why do you sound upset,” she said.

Percy gestured broadly. “I don’t sound upset,” he said.

Annabeth had spent her freshman and sophomore years of college wrapping up the rebuilding of Mount Olympus; on her last day, nothing more than a tour of her living designs, Athena had walked with her. _I know you are intent on pursuing this,_ she had said, _and I will not stop you. But I will advise you, the way I have advised countless heroes before you. I have never known a child of Poseidon to be anything less than a child of Poseidon, no matter how they are nurtured. Their nature rules them. The sea knows no laws but circumstance; it is ungovernable, it will never lie still. What is of Poseidon’s blood cannot be anything other than of Poseidon’s blood._

Annabeth’s smart, intelligent response had been, _thanks for the insight, but you don’t know how actually ungovernable Poseidon’s children are until you’ve ridden in a car with one while he breaks every traffic law ever legislated._ Athena had huffed. She hadn’t found it quite as funny as Annabeth had.

Athena had continued her warning, her proud, strong features as austere as ever. _I will tell you a secret. The golden bridle I gave to Bellerophon has no enchantment, and it has no power. It is not even, technically, gold. Pegasus allowed Bellerophon to back him because like attracts like. Pegasus was always wild. What belongs to the sea must always return, but what belongs to the sea will return only to the sea._

_What about the part where Pegasus was turned into a constellation, in the sky, very far away from the sea,_ Annabeth had asked.

Athena’s eyes, if possible, had grown graver. _His prison, for carrying Bellerophon to Olympus. Zeus was quite angry, to have two sons of his brother charging to our keep._

Annabeth had found Athena’s advice relevant, except maybe not in the ways the goddess of wisdom had intended—it was easier to remember, sometimes, when Percy was at his most inscrutable that it wasn’t as if Percy intentionally confused her. Percy hadn’t asked to be a son of Poseidon any more than Annabeth had asked to be a daughter of Athena.

“If you want me to understand,” Annabeth said, gently, “you have to talk to me.”

Percy sighed, a long, drawn-out sound. “Sometimes,” he said, “it feels like I’m kind of holding you back. Wouldn’t it be easier for you, if you weren’t stuck here with me, having this… talk, or whatever.”

“No,” Annabeth said.

Percy looked up, finally, eyes squinted in that way that meant he was trying to puzzle something out. “That was quick,” he said.

“That’s not—something I have to think about,” Annabeth said, stiffly. “If the question’s about whether I want to be with you, the answer’s yes, full stop, no questions asked.”

“Wasn’t the question, but, uh, thanks,” he said. “You, uh. Too. Same.”

Annabeth grinned. “Never thought I’d see the day where I was better at the words, when fighting. This is new. I like this. Same?”

Percy covered his mouth with a hand, laughed into it. “Shut up, I’m tired. Some of us have ancient curses that require us to sleep more,” he said.

Annabeth’s grin faded. “Do you want to sleep? This is the kind of thing you can sleep on.”

Percy looked aghast. “You want to extend a fight? That never goes well. No, no, that’s a terrible idea.”

Annabeth’s brows raised. “I don’t think we’re fighting.”

“It’s a conversation I don’t like, that isn’t fun at all, and that means it’s a fight,” Percy grumbled. “I don’t know, though. I’m sorry. I got angry a little fast.”

“Hm, getting angry a little fast, that sounds serious. Might have to throw the Geneva Convention at you, look you away for good.”

Normally Percy would’ve risen to the bait, followed the trail of banter to wherever it led, but that night he ducked his head again and his shoulders hiked up, stiffening. Annabeth reached out and squeezed his knee through the denim.

“Joke,” she said. “That was a joke. I was kidding. Are you okay?”

Percy shrugged. “Weird night, I think,” he said.

_Yes, I know, you told the cashier at the 7-Eleven that we’d ridden a horse from South Carolina_ , she thought. Annabeth worried her lip. “Define weird.”

“You asked me,” he said, “what I wanted to be as a kid.”

Annabeth nodded. “I did.”

“I didn’t, though. I didn’t—I didn’t have things I wanted to do. I don’t remember what I wanted to be when I grew up,” he said. “I don’t think I had anything. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be anything. And I don’t think that’s normal.”

Annabeth wrung her hands, picking at one of her nails. _I don’t think it is, either,_ she wanted to say, but instead she settled with, “I don’t know.” It was a cold comfort, if it was a comfort at all.

“Didn’t assume I’d get that far, I guess,” Percy said. “I don’t know how you… you’re more hopeful than I am. I don’t know how you do that.”

“I want things. I try to make them happen,” Annabeth said. She paused to swallow. “I don’t know if that’s hope.”

If anyone had asked Annabeth what she thought hope looked like, she wouldn’t have been able to give it any one name. Hope looked like Luke Castellan pulling her out of the way of a hellhound barreling towards her, his rushed, _hi, I’m Luke, could you see that, too?_ and maybe hope looked like Thalia, stealing scissors from the corner store to chop off her hair, to hack out the mats that Annabeth’s curls had turned into after a week and a half of running for her life and sleeping in dumpsters. She wouldn’t have said it at the time, either, but hope was Luke pulling her into his arms because her ankle was broken, and Annabeth watching over his shoulder as they scrambled down Half-Blood Hill with Grover screaming for help, and watching Thalia kill a Fury with her dying breath. _She will always protect you_ had been a lie, but at seven years old, between Chiron’s whip-strong forelegs, it had tasted like hope. And she wouldn’t breathe a word, that maybe talking about hope made her think of Luke, standing crookedly in the throne room of the gods, taking the knife that would ultimately kill him. Hope had a thousand and one faces, a thousand and one tastes; but love would only look like Percy, and love would only taste like Georgia peaches.

Percy shifted so his legs weren’t crossed, but stretched out in front of him. “I don’t think I like alcohol very much.”

“You had two sips, and to be fair to alcohol everywhere, this is 7-Eleven garbage seltzer,” she said.

Percy flicked his mostly full can. The resulting aluminum _pop_ was almost painfully loud. “My other stepdad used to drink a lot,” he said, lightly.

And then Annabeth understood why it had sounded like Percy had been talking around something the entire night—he had been. His words were half-words and they had no shadow because he was wandering his way to the point, which was maybe one of his more irritating habits, because a solid three-fourths of the time, Percy would never make it to the point, and Annabeth couldn’t string together a mystery with four clues and no culprits. Whatever the point had been would sink beneath the tumult, lost until the next red sky at morning, if it ever resurfaced again. The problem wasn’t that Percy had never imagined a future for himself, even as a kid; the problem was that the reason for it had a face, and a name.

“You still don’t talk about him all that much,” she said, carefully.

Percy snorted. “Who would want to,” he said.

Annabeth sucked in a breath. It was starting to get colder, as the moon rose, as the Earth forgot the Sun, and she stifled a shiver. “I don’t know. If it would help, I’d listen. You listen to me.”

“Not enough,” he said, gravely, the way Athena said everything. Wiser than wisdom ever gave him credit for. “We’re leaving tomorrow. We should probably get sleep.”

“Probably,” Annabeth agreed.

As far as dates go, Annabeth had done a bang-up job ruining it; they’d gone all the way to get candy and drinks, and barely touched any of it, in favor a conversation Annabeth would be picking apart in her head for at least a week. Annabeth packed up the bag and Percy folded the quilts, and because he was raised by Sally Jackson, he held the ladder still for her while she worked her way down it, and took everything back to the tack room. When they traced their steps back, he laced his cold hand with hers, so maybe it wasn’t quite ruined, but it wasn’t quite perfect, either.

Cabin Three was the same long, low building, maybe less familiar to her after enough years apart from it, but recognizable. One of the handful of cabins that staunchly refused to change.

“Sneaking in here was more exciting when it was forbidden,” Annabeth said, fumbling her hand against the wall for the light switch. She found it, and warm, yellow light flooded the room—it was neater than it’d ever been when Percy lived here regularly, because Percy’s neatness was a relatively new habit he’d developed.

Percy flipped back the covers. “Remind me to get my phone from the hay loft tomorrow,” he said. “I think I left it.”

“The battery’s going to be dead.”

Percy scrunched his nose. “I don’t use my phone for anything other than calling my mom, and getting chewed out by my boss. It can be dead. That’s fine.”

Annabeth dropped the plastic bag on the nightstand. “We wasted those drinks.”

“Make better alcohol-purchasing decisions,” he said, climbing into the bed.

Annabeth toed off her sneakers. “We packed pajamas, you know.”

_“I_ packed pajamas,” Percy said, rucking the blanket up to his shoulders. _“I_ did the packing. You did the frustrated yelling at Chiron for choosing after you started the semester to bring up demigod problems.”

“You’re wearing jeans.”

“Are we going to get to the part where we cuddle anytime soon,” Percy growled into the pillow. “I think you can handle me wearing a pair of jeans to sleep.”

Annabeth laughed, but wormed her way beneath the thick, navy comforter—she’d always been kind of jealous of Cabin Three’s linens, because they seemed a lot softer than the ones the Athena cabin had, or maybe it was just the fact that they were Percy’s. “This bed was a lot bigger when we were sixteen,” she said.

Percy twisted so he was only half facedown in the pillow, and one green eye blinked at her. “Insult my bed one more time. I’ll make you sleep in your old cabin. You can explain to them while you’re walking in at an ungodly hour, that can be your job.”

Annabeth shoved his shoulder. “You wouldn’t.”

“I’m gonna learn how to say ‘no’ to you, one of these days,” Percy said. His voice was unreasonably soft, somehow. “Keep fucking with me. It’s my next New Years’ resolution, to say ‘no’ to you.”

Annabeth grinned. “It’s not New Years’, though.”

“You’ve got a couple months to prepare.”

For that, Annabeth made Percy get up to turn off the overhead light, even if he swore the whole way. He tucked himself back in, shifting closer to Annabeth, because it was really only a twin-size bed; she laid against him, head tucked into the curve of his neck. Her hand, thrown over him, rubbed at one of the raw burn scars beneath his shirt with a thumb. He used to not let her touch them, tried to avoid letting her look at them, if he could.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, finally.

Annabeth huffed a laugh. “I’ll remind you when you forget.”

The next day Annabeth trashed the drinks, because they were well and truly wasted, but she tucked the candy into the drawer of Cabin Three’s nightstand. They’d have to come back; they always would. They were not the kind of people who could leave their pasts safely in the past, but they could, at least, help each other carry the burden.

**Author's Note:**

> DON'T @ ME ABOUT ALL THE METAPHORS AND ALLUSIONS THAT ARE USELESS....... except did anyone catch that the title's a Sophocles quote and the horse they're above is named Sophocles PLEASE tell me someone saw what I did there PLEASE


End file.
